


Mister

by AtlinMerrick



Category: Modern AU Kylux seen through the lens of Peter Rabbit (2018), Peter Rabbit (2018), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: And he's a prostitute, And inspired by Domhnall Gleeson in a suit playing Farmer McGregor in Peter Rabbit, Because he's angry at his parents, Carrot porn if it comes to that and it may, Carrot porn in the final chapter...I told you right from the start this was probably going to happen, Happy Ending, I'm just sayin', It all makes sense if you squint super hard and are here for porn, It's Star Wars, Kylux - Freeform, M/M, Naked porn, Or the stars, Suit Porn, This is some strange version of Ben and Hux or Kylo and Armitage or I don't even know., Welcome and please enjoy your stay, Which is why I'm here, Without the war, also feels, kylux adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2018-10-22 05:22:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 20,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10690617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/pseuds/AtlinMerrick
Summary: Right. So this was inspired byDomhnall Gleeson in a suit. In a three-piece suit and playing Mr. McGregor in "Peter Rabbit."NaturallyALL THE PHOTOSmade me think of a high-class rent boy, an angry, high-class rent boy—think Hux only he's named Peter and there's no uniform, battle cruiser, or Jedi. What thereisis the love of Peter's life, Ben Organa, darling of the small screen, suddenly thrust into Peter's life again.Following are their memories and misunderstandings. Here there is angst and emo. There is porn and rabbit innuendo. There is improper use of carrots. And there is definitely a happy ending. Thank you and please enjoy your stay.





	1. Suit

Peter McGregor makes the clients call him Mister.

Just that. He tells them that if they call him anything else, _anything_ else, they'll get half the fucking they want and pay double for it.

His parents would be so proud of their little business man.

They want him to prove himself worthy of his inheritance, don't they? The one they're holding hostage for another six _years,_ when he's fucking _forty?_ Fine, he'll prove himself, on his back or his belly and just for _spite._

Because he's got no desire to go to mam's Ivy League college, get a set of initials after his name like she has, call himself doctor or professor, like she does. And hell no, he's not going into the family agri-business thank you.

That's what they wanted, when they gave him The Talk last year. Asked him to prove he could take care of himself beyond the London flat and the 'maintenance' they give him. Grow up. Earn some money.

Okay. Fine. Just fine. He knew how to do that.

He learned about it way back when he was still a virgin and going to all those lovely, messy parties where he and his friends would get drunk on someone else's brandy. There was always that one really pretty boy there too, he'd smile himself up to immaculate men and women in their expensive clothes, and he'd let them touch him and finger-feed him, and later, after so many drinks, they'd go away, away, away together.

Peter's the opposite of that wispy boy who'd flutter his lashes and duck his chin and look so _ripe_ and _bitable._ Peter wears bespoke suits fitted to his lanky frame. He doesn't do coy or sweet. And he doesn't let them pick _him,_ Peter picks them. He's attended enough lovely, messy parties since The Talk that by now the clients know how lucky they are.

And he always, _always_ makes them call him Mister.

"Hey there, sweetheart."

Peter picks up a brandy from the passing waiter's tray. He'll school the deep-voiced man behind him, definitely turn him down if he's looking for a leg over, because that's part of the fun, not picking until the night's nearly over.

With a lift of the chin and a purr he turns, saying, "That's _Mister_. Always and only." Then Peter says, "Oh fucking hell."

Ben Organa is smiling at him with those bright brown eyes and that god damn mouth and right then Peter's nineteen again and _coming_ in that mouth and then he's twenty-three and he's crying, "But why are you leaving?" and then he's twenty-seven and he's watching the love of his life on that stupid TV show that was such a hit for awhile and now they're both thirty-four years old and it's been years and—

"Jesus you look good, baby."

—and Mister Peter McGregor is screwed.

—  
_Domhnall Gleeson **[LOOKS LIKE THIS IN A SUIT](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/158978026294/domhnallgleesonbrasil-domhnall-probably)** so the only proper response to _ that _was, apparently,_ this. _And this, whatever this is, is not over. Oh_ hell _no._


	2. Three Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Filth. That's what came second. What came first was something Peter never expected…

Filth. Absolute. That's what came second.

What first came to Peter McGregor's mind, standing there at that fancy party and setting eyes on six feet three inches of Ben Organa in a tuxedo was…crying.

"I love you."

He'd say that, in their messy bed, his body still slick with come and sweat. He'd say it and say it, cry it and cry it, all those times, all those years ago, because oh god it _hurt_ how much he felt so he just had to feel it. He'd clutch Ben's hair and mash their mouths together, moaning, "I love you so much," and he'd cry.

Ben's fingers would dig into Peter's long hair and he'd kiss-kiss-kiss the tears, soft and warm and slow and it just made Peter cry more of them.

He wasn't angry back then. Back then Peter McGregor was what he was: A young man desperately in love, wanting more than anything to be _everything_ to this man. He couldn't think when Ben was around, he didn't even try.

Later he realized that that was the problem.

Because the world didn't stop simply because he had. _Ben_ didn't stop. He still wanted, dreamed, planned. Acting. He wanted to act.

And though he'd spent half his life in Dublin, Ben had never belonged there. He didn't belong back in Indiana either, where his family'd come from. No, Benjamin Organa belonged just one place and he knew it.

At twenty-three he'd got up and gone. He'd gone away, from Ireland, from Peter, from _them._ He'd gone to London.

Peter hadn't followed then and he hadn't followed now. No, the only reason he was in London now was because his parents weren't. So now Peter was holed up in the Southbank flat his family never even used, now Peter has sex with people for money, and now Ben does too, only his is broadcast on cable TV.

Both kinds of sex were wrong.

Peter's because it was a pointless rebellion that the people against whom he was rebelling didn't even know about, and Ben's? Ben's was wrong because the people he had it with _got_ it wrong.

Those people who touched him on camera? Those fake lovers on that so-popular-until-it-wasn't TV show who touched Ben's body demanding, rough, wild?

No, no, _no._ Wrong, wrong, _wrong._

Peter's love had always craved careful strokes, soft touches. He opened heart and body to _praise._

It had made Peter giddy their first time. Nineteen both and finally in bed together, tested and clean, wanting and willing, and Ben had made such tiny sounds, sweet, addictive little noises to every sweet word Peter babbled.

And Ben always did, every time, and oh there were so _many_ times in those first giddy months, god they were at it like _rabbits._

They rutted against each other at parties, pretended to be drunk if someone caught one with his hand down the other's pants. They fucked each other over sofas when flatmates were out, pushing hastily-lubed dicks into barely-bared arses. They made love for _hours,_ their beds became worlds, homes, musky nests of come-smeared sheets and sloppy kisses, and always, always Peter whispered endearments against Ben's cock or into the wet of his mouth or his arse, and it was all of it so good and so sweet and so anything else, anything _less_ was—

"—wrong."

To the sound of glasses clinking and his own quick breath, Peter shook himself back to the _now._ "What?"

But Ben was backing up and it was only Peter grabbing his wrist that prevented the collision with a passing waiter.

"I said I'm sorry," Ben pulled his arm to his chest and Peter's hand slipped free, "that was wrong."

For a moment Peter was sure Ben had read his filthy mind, then Ben continued.

"'Baby,' 'sweetheart,' they kind of slipped out. I didn't…"

Oh. Right. That.

Peter stepped back. The man he was now, he doesn't stand for that. He's an actor too, after all, and will not break character. Whether he's got a dick in his mouth or his own balls deep, he doesn't croon and cuddle, pet or whisper or fucking _cry_ and that's where this started, isn't it, this memory lane because that, right now, is what Peter felt like doing.

And there was one way not to do that.

Stay in character.

"Apology accepted," said the man called Mister.

The silence grew then, it reached out. It muted everything around them for what felt like so long that Peter almost, very nearly, _just_ about broke, quite nearly whispered, "Hello lovey," in that soft voice he'd long ago used to gentle this big man, but suddenly Ben gestured, muttered, "Ah, there she. I have to go. It's…right." Then he walked away, head inclined toward the woman giving this party. She placed her hand at the small of Ben's back and guided him toward shadows.

 _Be gentle,_ Peter thought. _Touch him slow._

Mister left the party then, alone.

It was as he went out the door that Peter had his third thought about Ben Organa, and that thought was this: He thought this would be the last time he'd see him.

Yet, like sex with strangers to spite parents who didn't notice, like actors who thought that because a man was so very big he must be pushed and pulled and handled, well, about that Peter McGregor was really very wrong.

—  
_So help me if there are more Peter Rabbit set photos soon I may not survive. But what a way to go, murdered by a sartorially-elegant Domhnall Gleeson._


	3. Enter Phay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Apology fucking accepted Peter?"
> 
> Phay McGregor looked around the kitchen for another missile to throw. Peter undid his tie faster.
> 
> "What kind of moron—" Phay chucked an empty butter wrapper. "—says that to his ex-one true love?"

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

With precision and shouting, Phasma "Phay" McGregor peeled Peter McGregor out of his three-piece suit.

She achieved this far more quickly than any of Peter's randy clients ever had, and she did this by throwing things at her brother's body until he had to remove his expensive clothes or risk butter stains.

"You said 'apology accepted'?"

A chunk of burnt scone narrowly missed the waistcoat Peter had only just managed to take off. "Apology fucking _accepted_ Peter?" Phay looked around the kitchen for another missile. Peter undid his tie faster. "What kind of moron—" Phay chucked an empty butter wrapper at her brother's moronic head. "—says that to his ex-one true love?"

Frantically untucking his perfectly-pressed shirt Peter reflected that he never should have called Ben all those sweet names in his sister's presence.

Phay snatched up another hunk of scone.

"I know you swan about those parties all dour and uppity, I know you sleep with all those clueless rich people—and that's weird shit Peter, you know that that's some truly weird shit—but I never would have thought you'd be an utter _arse end_ to Ben after all these years of you fucking _moaning_ about how much you missed him."

During 'arse' and 'end,' Phay pelted her brother with two greasy measuring spoons, both of which left oily smears down his now-bare chest.

"And another thing, you knob—"

Peter saw Phay reach for the tray on which rested another of her failed baking attempts and he responded by tripping out of his trousers. By the time he'd made it down to his briefs Phay let fly with a handful of sultanas. These did little more than pelt his arse end.

"—I'm tired of your shit. I'm done with your moping around, acting like you're put upon when in reality all that shit is done. All that stuff from back then is _back then._ No one even knows who you are any more, no one's expecting you to smile and smile and smile and yes, mam and dad are bigger arse ends than even you but guess what? They're not _here_ and you're not _there_ any more. You came to London to start again so _start_ for god's sake. Just get. over. yourself. already."

Phay took a deep breath and Peter waited for more baked goods and shouting but instead Phasma sighed and did the thing that drove him mad. She went ahead and seemed small and fragile when she was very much neither and as he'd always done, Peter wanted to wrap her up and whisper, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry." All their lives it was rarely he who hurt her but he always told her he was _sorry sorry sorry_ and somehow it helped. It always helped, both of them.

Her small moment passed as quickly as it had come and Phay looked at him, stepped close. She took a deep breath, which always made her four inches taller instead of the usual three, and Phay McGregor looked down at her big brother and said, "If you don't fix this, little Peter Rabbit, if you don't go find your fluffy bunny beast"—so many endearments, he'd called Ben _so,_ so many—"if you don't go find that boy and _fix_ this, I'm going to do it, I really am. I'm putting then-and-now photos of your _face_ on the internet and you just see if I don't."

Peter held his breath. Phay let hers out long and slow. Then she smiled, kissed the top of his head, and murmuring "good talk," Phay left the kitchen.

And Mister Peter McGregor, once long ago and quite famously known as Peter Rabbit, well he stood in that kitchen in nothing but his socks and his skivvies, a wide circle of burnt baked goods at his feet, and he waited, only shifting once he heard the clank of weights.

Good. Phay was working out. Probably burning off her pique with him by pretending to hoist him ceiling-ward. She did that a few times when they were teenagers. He'd tried lifting _her_ once and tore a rotator cuff.

Finally Peter swept the kitchen floor, collected the bits of his suit from the kitchen table, and went to his bedroom.

There Peter McGregor reflected that overcompensation had always seemed such a big word, when a much smaller one would do.

Fear.

Masquerading as some stiff-lipped posh boy called Mister, Peter has spent the last year fucking strangers so as to wildly overcompensate for his past. To assure the man he is that he's as important, as needed, as the boy he once was, Peter has sex for money, but in the end he doesn't feel needed, not even desired. He just feels the same old fear. He's _not_ important, not any more.

Because he grew up, as little boys do.

When he was a happy boy of five, with bright red hair and a grinning mouthful of snaggle teeth, he'd accidentally become the face of McGregor's Meadows. His image growing ever more associated with the company as it grew from boutique organic farm to multi-national agri-business. They'd daub on the freckles he didn't even have, and he'd grin his wide grin for adverts, for little plush toys, for commercials. He held armfuls of fancy lettuces, tomatoes, chard, but most of all the thing he became known for, a rainbow of carrots in red and purple and yellow.

Peter Rabbit.

With his bright red hair grown-ups recognised him on the street, they took photos with him; he was important.

With his red bright hair kids recognised him at school and they mocked him; he was a joke. They'd hop-hop-hop past his desk. They'd stand behind him doing 'bunny ears' until Peter would turn and catch them, and they'd laugh right in his face.

By the time Peter McGregor met Ben Organa he was fifteen, five years done with the exploitation of his childhood, and he was ready for a friend.

They became that until they figured out that they could become more. So at nineteen they did.

The distant clanking of a weight and Peter shook his head, stopped standing in the middle of his bedroom—expensively decorated by some interior designer his parents loved who loved nautical themes—dropped his fancy suit to the floor and fell on his knees in front of a horrible wardrobe with portholes and brass fittings, pulling a box out from underneath it.

Sitting cross-legged like a boy, thirty-four-year-old Peter McGregor, who called himself Mister, who used to answer to Peter Rabbit and who was kind of afraid and kind of angry and who was, according to his very smart sister, an arse end, a knob, and a moron, well he opened the box that was only just a little bit bigger than a bunch of carrots and he looked inside.

In there were cards and letters. Mementos and charms. Little things that held big memories of five years with Ben, of a few years of longing right after.

There was another thing and Peter smiled as he plucked up the little black box inside the box.

His pulse helpfully kicked up as he opened it.

Inside, a pair of tiny black panties, cut for a man, with just enough cloth up front and at the back a heart-shaped cutout trimmed thick with silver thread.

Lying across his hands those knickers were kind of ridiculous, but on his body he was—

"So beautiful baby." Ben said reverently the night Peter first wore those panties. "How," Ben whispered, sitting on the edge of their bed, "can you look like this?"

Drifting close, Peter hadn't said _like what_ but Ben heard the words anyway.

He ran his thumb along the bright trail of red hair below Peter's bellybutton. His other hand brushed the white skin of Peter's waist, then his hand drifted up to 'the world's tiniest nipples,' little nubs that plumped quickly under the stroking of Ben's big fingers.

"Perfect," he'd finally answered as Peter straddled him, kissed him, sucked his neck full of pretty bruises and filled his ears with their special words. When even these custom-made knickers couldn't contain the erection spilling out the top of them, Ben encouraged his love onto his belly and made fine use of the strategically-placed cutout heart, pushing his tongue right on into his love's fine arse hole, eating him out until Peter at last humped the innocence right out of Ben's pillow.

"You know I wouldn't really."

_"JEEZUS FUCK PHAY."_

After Peter's heart rate returned to normal and his brain and cock got back from memory lane, Phay—who'd seen those knickers before, no biggie—sat down next to her brother and she said again, "I wouldn't really, with the before-after photo thing."

Peter nodded. He knew. Pretty much. Though if she did out him he'd kind of deserve it.

"What should I do Phay?"

Phasma McGregor, who was a year younger than her brother, who was tall right on out of the womb, who never was particularly adorable-looking and so unsuitable for marketing purposes, she said the most sensible thing anyone had said to Peter all day.

"I think you should put your pretty panties on like a man, and you should go see Ben."

—  
_Yes, I have given Peter McGregor the back-story of Christopher Robin Milne, son of writer A.A. Milne who wrote the Winnie the Pooh books (and who Domhnall is also playing in a film (Milne, not Pooh)). P.S. Thank you Admiral Winklepicker for 'fluffy bunny beast,' and the knickers, thank you._


	4. Worship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His first time the couple brought him here, Peter had tried to give. He shifted so they could touch his neck, his nipples, his cock or his ass, but they never wanted his parts. They want the art of his all, she once said.
> 
> He doesn't know what they do after he leaves. Doesn't even know if this is sexual for them, though it's always sexual for him.
> 
> That's part of what they pay him for.

They're always gentle with Peter.

They murmur endearments to him. They kiss his bare shoulders and arms and hands. They share his fingertips between them as if they're rare sweets. Neither the wife nor husband ever speak loudly or without care.

Here in their quiet home he is always Peter. Like his mask of _Mister,_ he's still for sale, yes, but the thing being bought by this couple isn't his body, it's his beauty.

They're not the same thing.

"We're glad you're here," the wife said, opening their front door. "It's been so long," said the husband, reaching.

They take Peter's hands and lead him up a wide staircase, into their bedroom.

*

"—just one moment Mr. McGregor."

Standing at his bedroom window that morning, Peter'd watched Phay get into her bright silver Merc, wondering again how she found a place to park near London Bridge. He was glad she'd told him to do this. Somehow it had given him courage.

"So sorry," said last night's host returning to the phone, "It looks like Ben Organa's number is on my work laptop. I can get it to you tomorrow though I suspect he's probably flown home by now."

A lot of time can pass in very little. It felt like a little bit of forever until Peter could say, "Flown?"

There was the distant sound of a dog barking. "Hush Hammie! Uh yes, he lives in America now, New York I think. Sorry Mr. McGregor, I must go."

Because Lady Natarajan was English, she waited politely for Peter's reply.

"Go," he said, and hung up without waiting for a reply.

Peter wasn't English.

Peter watched his sister's car pull away. He was alone. He did not want to be.

He dialed another number.

*

They're always gentle with Peter. This time was no different.

They guided him into their vast bedroom as if he were spun-sugar delicate, as they always did. They brought him before the beautiful three-way mirror, as they always did. He lifted his arms and stood pliant while they undressed him, as he always did.

Though they do so like his suits.

"Exquisite tailoring," the husband said as he unbuttoned Peter's black shirt. "You've _the_ perfect build for fine clothes," the wife agreed.

Still and all, they dropped his fine white suit to the floor as they bared him, and Peter laughed. He always did.

He laughed again, ticklish, when her fingers lingered on the curves of his waist. She kissed her apology onto his bare shoulders and the inside of his wrist, then held that wrist toward her husband, a morsel to share.

Peter used to wrap one of Ben's big hands around both his own wrists. "They're like thin little flower stems," Ben would whisper, pressing his face into Peter's captive hands, the biggest of besotted bees.

His first time they'd brought him here, Peter had tried to _give._ He shifted so they could touch his neck, his nipples, his cock or his ass, but they never wanted his parts. They want the art of his all, she once said.

He doesn't know what they do after he leaves, he doesn't even know if this is sexual for them, though it's always sexual for him. That's part of what they pay him for.

They love him til he comes.

That takes awhile because, like many venerations, theirs are performed over hours.

After he's stripped, they bathe him.

Kneeling either side of the narrow tub they use their hands to stroke his skin clean, the soap without scent, the water perfect-warm. If he has a beard they shave him. After, they lift his arms and shave beneath. When he's hairless there, the wife rubs her face into his skin. "You still smell of man," she says and Peter knows what she means.

Long ago, when he would come out naked-wet from a shower, Ben would sometimes nuzzle under his arms, sucking at the moisture, moaning at the scent. Often he'd end up nuzzling other things.

Like Ben, the wife likes the humid parts of Peter's body, breathing deep of him in all those places. It's why he's pretty sure there's sex between the couple after he leaves. Yet…he's not _really_ sure. He wants that uncertainty.

They help him from the bath and he stands still while they pat him dry. They rub an unscented lotion over him, comb his hair a long while, they tell him he is beautiful. It's then he'll start to go hard.

Afterward they place him in front of the pretty mirror again and this is when it truly begins.

They like soft colors. "Such pretty pale skin," they say, each time. And so the camisoles and the knickers, the stockings and the lace collars, they're subtle blues and greens, muted pinks and oranges, pretty colors to embellish pretty flesh.

He often wonders if somewhere in their vast home there's a fortune of lingerie tucked away for they never clothe him in the same things twice, and neither the husband nor the wife is built like him.

The thought always flits away as they start to dress him. This time they've chosen a pale sea green.

The bralette is longline, its lace reaching down to his ribs, the cups are as flat as he is for this was made for him. The panties always match and this time they're tiny. He fidgets a little because thongs make him feel awkward, which makes him want to laugh because Ben had liked them.

He forgets about that when they role the sheer, pale stockings up his legs. He wishes they'd shaved him there but they rarely do. Afterward they tie a lace collar around his throat, the husband gently pats it flat.

Then they look.

Peter watches them back and yes, though he doesn't know what they do after he leaves, he knows what they do now.

Worship him.

It's there in how they move around his body, bright eyes admiring the lace and silk against his skin.

It's there in how they touch, the back of the husband's hands across Peter's jaw, the wife's fingers stroking his neck. They both murmur praise as they touch his tiny nipples, his soft sides, his belly.

A giant hungry for gentility, Ben had blossomed under just such venerations. They could spend hours in bed talking and Peter would kiss his lover's palms and wrists, his chest and nose and ears until the man was touch-drunk.

Now Peter is like Ben, a little. Though their touches never change _from_ something _to_ something, eventually the man and the woman _do_ want something.

To arouse him.

It takes awhile.

They take turns running hands up his arms to his shoulders and back again. They slide fingers into the hollow of his throat and down his spine. They tease ticklish at his sides, and then touch the skin where goosebumps bloom. After those fade they roam the small sweet curve of his lower back, then do it all again.

Eventually the touches linger at his hips and his belly, they dance over the tempting creases of his thighs. One wraps a hand around his waist, then reaches round and teases down the crack of his arse, the other pressing at his perineum. He closes his eyes when fingers slide up and between, wriggling until they touch his hole.

Usually he's a little bit wet by now, tiny pearls beading panties damp. He always wants them to lick him there, but neither ever does. Instead they tuck the knickers below his balls and stroke his erection.

Though he doesn't have one today.

He wants to feel ashamed. Coming is part of what they pay him for.

He thinks about saying something but the only words that want to come are childish and so he thinks about other times he's been with them, where he let his mind go to get him there.

He thinks of Ben. Thinks of his legs spread, but instead of how Ben's come tasted in his mouth, or how Ben sounded with Peter's tongue pushing inside, he thinks of Ben's arms around his neck and his legs over his shoulder.

He'd had a passion for that, for being folded up, for being made smaller while Peter loved him, fucked him. He'd tuck his face into Peter's neck and make the smallest, _best_ sounds while they rocked together and though you'd think all of that would make a man come quick, it never did, it made Peter slow because he loved giving Ben what he needed, he _needed_ that.

She whispers in his ear.

It's not really words, but noises of admiration, and Peter realizes he's finally growing hard.

So he thinks of Ben some more. Eyes closed he pretends it's Ben's hand on his belly—she loves his belly, sometimes she kneels to kiss him there and so the husband kneels behind, touches his ass and—

—Ben had always wished he had "a much better ass, look at it!" Peter would always do as he was told, he'd look, get up close, then bite those cheeks, pry them apart and taste between. He'd announce his findings. "Sorry darlin', this is the best ass in Dublin." Then he'd eat Ben out until he made the small sounds, the very _best_ sounds.

Peter's not really aware whose hand is on him when he comes, but he knows it's the husband who swallows him down, it's his mouth Peter fills. Sometimes it's hers; not today.

"Thank you beautiful," she says afterward, "so sweet," she whispers. Peter feels his heart kick up, skin prickling with a no-good sweat. Suddenly he wants to take off everything _now,_ be gone _now,_ but instead he smiles and says something, his mind such a welter he doesn't remember the words moments after they leave his mouth.

They take their time undressing him, they always do, they're gentle as they put his suit back on. Its wrinkles from being abandoned on the floor are always the odd little note of the whole thing, but Peter's never felt like questioning their why, not about any of this, so he doesn't start now.

Two hours after he's arrived Peter leaves and though he drives away he doesn't go home. He parks near Primrose Hill, walks to the top and up there he cries.

When he gets home it's not even noon, the rest of the day ahead of him. He misses the regiment he knew as a working child. He has yet to replace that purpose with anything else but confused petulance.

Peter crawls onto his sister's bed, presses his face into her pillow. When they were little—when _he_ was little, because Phay was born outsized, just like Ben—if he hurt Peter would crawl into Phay's bed and mash his face between her shoulder blades. She was his wall against the world, solid and strong. Nothing like he was, nothing like he _is._

When Phay gets home hours later, she doesn't wake him, just eats her dinner, watches some television, then crawls into bed with her phone.

After a very little bit, Peter presses his face against her back, never waking.

—  
_Peter won't stay sad much longer. By the way, where does emo come from, can someone tell me? It's like once you dip a toe in, the tidal wave comes. Damn sticky stuff, too. (Here's[Peter's white suit](https://hey-big-deal.tumblr.com/post/171453074974/vogue-photoshoot).)_


	5. When He Was Small

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben Organa knows about acting. He knows about costumes and putting on a persona. He also knows when an actor has been miscast.
> 
> There was one other thing Ben Organa knew.
> 
> Peter McGregor wasn't who he was so desperately pretending to be.

Ben Organa sat in the cold sun and grinned toothily at his phone.

On it was a photograph of a photograph of a nine-year-old boy. The boy's red hair stuck out every which way, his narrow shoulders were bunched right up around his ears, and his eyes were squinched closed in bliss as he held a baby rabbit against his mouth.

Every time Ben looked at this photo he smiled back at the small boy Peter McGregor once was. Every. single. time.

He had dozens of photos like this. "Junk" Peter had called them, the disavowed ephemera of his childhood. There'd been postcards, too, children's books, even tiny Christmas ornaments with his ginger likeness. Ben collected all of it a couple years into their love affair, when Peter had upended a box of the stuff into the kitchen bin. "Phay gave this junk to me. I've no idea why she kept it."

Ben had sat right down by the bin and spent hours plucking things out, looking and squealing, "Holy shit this is so cute!" Peter had just rolled his eyes and smiled.

Ben's favourite thing had been a poster of six-year-old Peter in a little blue coat, a satchel filled with carrots slung over his shoulder. He stood small-boy tall, hands on hips, and written in bold cursive below his bare knees was the legend _Be Brave._

Or maybe his favourite thing had been the series of children's books in which the illustrated ginger boy and his woodland friends visited gardens all over the world—Buckingham Palace, the Taj Mahal, the Kremlin.

Except really _really_ the thing Ben loved most was this photo, a family snap of his love when he was little.

_He's not your little love anymore. And besides, it was always you who wanted to be small._

Ben chuffed out a big breath, looked at the traffic going by on Second Avenue.

He'd been here nearly half a year and it still hit him again and again how big New York City was. His manager said a man big as himself _fit_ a city like this but that's the thing. Ben never has been good at fitting into the skin on his big bones. Maybe that's why he turned to acting, maybe that's why he doesn't like it here, maybe that's why the moment Nat called about her party he'd gone back to London.

Where Peter was now.

He'd always thought Peter would follow him to England. Turned out Peter had thought he'd come back to Ireland. Instead they came to each other, over and over for years, until the years did what they so often do to long-distance romances. Fade them quietly away.

Then _Saints &Sinners _came along and for six giddy seasons Ben was part of a hit show, a huge cast, and he fell in love with being 'someone.'

It had been brilliant until it wasn't, until the show had gone to shit, the fame too, and now he was trying in New York City but it was so big and he was too small to fill it and he'd come to realise recently that he didn't miss the fame or the fans camped out front of his London flat or journalists asking his opinions on everything from the rugby to royalty.

He didn't miss being 'someone.' Ben smiled at the photo of the little boy in blue. He missed being someone _to_ someone.

When he moved to New York he'd brought little with him. Some clothes, playbills, photos. But tucked in among that had been the box entire of Peter 'Rabbit,' all those things Peter had tried binning that long-ago day. Ben had rescued and brought with him every last memento.

"I miss _you,_ " he told the photo. "I should have said."

Instead at Nat's party he'd looked at the man in the blade-sharp suit and said _sweetheart._ He'd looked at the man with soft red hair done dark and severe with gel and he'd said _baby._

That man, the one at the party, he didn't look like the one who used to hold Ben's hand under restaurant tables because it made him feel secret and giddy. The one who would buy Ben sweets on his way home from college. The one who'd send emails from different rooms in their house… _I love you_ or _the sofa cushions smell like you_ or _come to bed already, this penis won't stay up forever._

No, that man didn't seem even an echo of this beautiful blue boy on Ben's phone.

Except here was a thing about that. A few things really.

Ben Organa knows about acting. He knows about costumes and putting on a persona. He also knows when an actor has been miscast.

There was one other thing Ben Organa knew.

Phay McGregor's phone number.

—  
_I recently visited Wray Castle, where Beatrix Potter went on holiday in her teens. There was tons of Peter Rabbit stuff at the castle, including[this charming poster](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/164442255249/fic-mister-ch5-ben-organa-knows-about-acting). You might notice that instead of a boy though, the poster is of a bunny._


	6. It's Tachy Not Tichy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ben called. You know him, your one true love?”
> 
> Peter groped for his own pulse. He’d read somewhere that the human heart could beat as much as four hundred times a minute. He was pretty sure he was halfway there. That had a name didn’t it? Tachy something? Tichy? 
> 
> Hopefully he remembered before he passed out…

"Stop it Phay!"

Phay did not stop pelting Peter with pillows. Phay was all about the fucking pelting. Somehow Peter was just cottoning on to this.

"Stop!"

So despite his demands, Phay failed to stop. Instead she collected from his bedroom floor the pillows she'd already thrown and threw them again.

"Get up you lazy bastard my god how does a man stay in bed all day? Don't you cramp? Don't your muscles just wither?"

"Stop!"

Phay did not stop, she threw _harder._ "Get up get up get u—"

_Fine._

Peter Alan Alexander McGregor jumped from his bed (much like a bunny would) and shouted (not at all like a bunny would), "I'm fucking up all right!"

Soft furnishings poised over her head, Phay huffed some hair from her eyes and said, "Put your panties on quick-smart boy, I'm having words with you in the kitchen."

Then Phay pelted her brother's chest with the last pillow and marched from his bedroom.

"Holy _fuck!"_ he shouted after, because Peter McGregor knew he was going to do everything his sister said and so he needed _some_ way of sassing back.

Forty-three seconds later he stood in the kitchen, pajamas on his long frame, sock-slippers on his big feet, a scowl on his unshaven face. He then did not say a sensible thing like, "What the fuck is this about?" or "Why can't you wake up a depressive the _normal_ way," or even "What bloody time is it?"

No, Peter McGregor, bedhead hair sticking up this way and that (looking a bit like red bunny ears actually) said instead, "When the hell did we get so many tiny pillows?"

Ignoring the question in favour of aggressively creaming together sugar and butter, Phay hissed, "Ben Organa called tonight. You know him, your one true love?"

Peter stopped in mid-beard scratch, mid-yawn, and mid-blink. "What? When? Did—"

"You just shut right up, mister."

Here's the thing: Some people are inclined to boss, some are inclined to _be_ bossed. Since she was little Phay has almost always told people what to do, and for as long as she could remember Peter had almost always done what he was told.

So Peter shut right up.

"About an hour ago."

Peter glanced at the clock, blinked himself some math. Nine in London, four in New York.

"I told him you weren't home."

Peter opened his mouth.

"Close your mouth boy."

A heartbeat and a half passed. Peter closed his mouth. Phay put her mixing bowl down. "He said he'd call again." She measured out some cashews. "We talked awhile."

Peter's feet, hands, and face were cold. Like they had no blood. He wondered if maybe his heart had stopped.

"About a half hour."

Peter's face was hot though. Maybe it was because he was thinking of all the things Phay could have talked about with Ben.

 _My brother's a knob end, did you know? He whores himself_ because _he's a knob end. Also, he's kept all the love letters you wrote him, has every email you ever sent, and bought the box set of Saints &Sinners. I'm pretty sure he gets off to some of those naked scenes you did._

Peter shook his head. No, Phay didn't know about that last bit. They were close but he was reasonably sure he never told her that.

"—no?"

"What?"

"You just shook your head when I asked—"

"No! I was just…it's. Is he calling back?"

"Do you want him to?"

Yes, yes, yes, yes _yesyesyesyesyesyesyes._

"I guess."

Phay clutched her cashews.

Peter ducked reflexively. "I do! I do want him to call back!"

"Why?"

Because I miss him, because I miss him, because— "I miss him."

Phay raised her eyes to heaven. "Thank you baby Jesus." She threw the nuts in the bowl, tugged her brother close until their foreheads clunked together. She looked into his absurd eyes. "Your eyes are absurd; you have the best lashes."

Peter smiled, remembering all the times he got what he wanted by fluttering them. So he did. "When? When will he call Phay?"

Instead of answering Phay held forth. "You get to choose happiness you know. It's your life, they don't own it any more. He misses you, Peter. Though I did kind of lie."

Right there in front of his sister and god Peter started crying, a tsunami of unexpected tears.

"Oh my god no, not about him missing you! Oh sweetie, I'm sorry!"

Peter groped for his own pulse. He'd read somewhere that the human heart could beat as much as four hundred times a minute. He was pretty sure he was halfway there. That had a name didn't it? Tachy something? Tichy?

"The bit I lied about was the call. The calling. Fuck, the calling _back._ I told Ben _you_ would call _him._ I just thought it would, you know we could talk first. Christ Peter, you look like you're going to vomit, are you—"

He was. He did.

Phay's feet got the worst of it.

"Well, that's fair."

*

An hour, a shower, and a meal later Phasma Helen McGregor apologised to her brother (again) with still-warm cashew cookies, eaten as they watched the final four episodes of _Saints &Sinners._ The cookies were almost actually good.

Less good was Phay's shouting when Peter replied that no, he would not be calling Ben.

"Oh. My God. I'm going to kill you or die myself. You miss him Peter, he misses you. Does he have to show up on bended knee? Blow up a planet? Does he—"

"I sent a text."

Phay frowned. Paused the TV. She contemplated taking away the cookies. "Texted? Texted? What, like 'Hi bai, it's Peter lol'?"

Peter Alan Alexander McGregor took the cookies away from his sister. He did not say "I have never texted like that in my entire life," neither did he say anything that could be misinterpreted as the exact opposite of what he meant. What Peter _did_ say, after pulling his sister close and pressing his forehead to hers was, "You have absurd eyes. They're so blue. Like the sky."

Phay's heart kicked up quick. She whispered hopeful, "You're going to New York?"

Peter's heart grew two sizes, giddy. He whispered back, "I'm going home."

—  
_Random facts: Phay's middle name is the same as Beatrix Potter's real first name while Peter's are those of Alan Alexander (A.A.) Milne; some day Phay'll get really good at the baking; the sex is so close you can almost see it if you squint._


	7. Hahdf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Peter texted him day before yesterday Ben had been in the middle of texting his agent. He'd been so startled by the message he nearly dropped his phone _trying to get to his phone._
> 
> Before the pop-up text box faded away Ben saw Peter's name and the beginning of his message.  
>    
>  _Hello beautiful._

London's river Thames is broad and brown and rises eye-widening high some days. As broad as that waterway is now, it used to be broader still and in compliment the city itself grew around it…and grew. Six hundred square miles vast, London has nearly nine million souls, a storied past, and a culture inclined toward a certain reserve.

New York City feels bigger than its quieter counterpart but it's actually smaller. Maybe it's the placid East river and the more turbulent Hudson that give the impression of size, or maybe it's that the city has a population nearly as large as London. Whatever the cause, New York seems forever big, busy, and boisterous; her people doubly so.

Dublin though, well Dublin's a different beast entire. A capital city in its own right, Dublin's river is narrow and slow, the bridges spanning it tiny. Her people are expansive though, they enjoy talking to visitors and as a culture tend toward a pleasant kind of civic pride.

It has all the dining a visitor could want, does Dublin, all the shops, museums, and monuments, yet it's noticeably _little_ for all that, less than a tenth the size of New York, with a population not much over half a million. Though it has sister cities in San Francisco and Paris, those places have hills, vistas, maybe tricks of sharp light that make them seem bigger than they are.

It was Dublin's sense of small that Ben Organa has always loved. How every time he stood on the tiny Ha'penny bridge he somehow felt as small, as right-sized as it, never too broad, never too tall. He wasn't Dublin-born but the place had always fit him better than London did, than New York does.

Which was…ridiculous.

Because a city doesn't fit a man. It doesn't know him, his size. Roads do not rise to meet him no matter what the poets say, and the light in Dublin didn't _really_ fall more gently on his upturned face.

And yet.

Ben closed his eyes to the summer sun and yes, that light _did_ feel soft, which made him laugh and that, like the light, was soft too.

When Peter texted him day before yesterday Ben had been in the middle of texting his agent. He'd been so startled by the message he nearly dropped his phone trying to _get to his phone._

His brain and fingers short-fucking-circuited then, had a fancy little melt-down, because before the pop-up box faded away Ben saw Peter's name and the beginning of his message.

_Hello beautiful._

Ben's text to his agent ended up being "GOddt to go, by for now ytnks" and despite the woman calling him right after, he never did hear her Imperial March ring tone, his focus entirely narrowed to one thing.

_Hello beautiful. It's Peter. I'm sorry about my idiocy at the party._

Humans are weird. Sometimes they only realise a thing all at once, unexpected like. Sat awkward in a slick metal cafe chair in noisy New York, Ben learned in one adrenaline-spiked second that, though he'd in these recent years loved well and been loved in return, he had not found a soul that fit his the way Peter McGregor's always had.

_hahdf_

Fuckity fuck. That was his giant fucking fingers trying to type _hello_ over the pounding of his heart and for the five minutes of their text conversation most of Ben's replies were nervous thumb vomit requiring lots of backspacing but, but, _but…_ in the end they'd both said the vital things needing saying.

_Yes._

_Me too._

_Day after tomorrow._

_I'll be there._

And here Ben was, toeing leaves off the Ha'penny bridge and into the Liffey, watching the river flow gentle while he waited, early and nervous, giddy and eager, trying not to check his phone every forty seconds and failing. It was during the fifth (eleventh) time, when he was just sliding it back into the pocket of slim-fit black trousers that his phone trilled with audio fairy dust, the Tinkerbell tone Ben had assigned to Peter.

And yes he was again so startled he nearly dropped his phone trying to _get to his phone,_ and yes he was already shaking by the time he got the fucking tiny thing in his fucking giant hands and yes, very much yes, emphatically yes his heart rate spiked and his limbs went adrenaline-cold and something like grief filled his throat when he saw Peter's name and the beginning of his message…

_Sorry_

…but Ben Organa is a big man in a world that does not trust his size, moving away, looking away, and so he had long ago had to learn to keep trying, to _strive,_ so he saw the message from Peter that started _sorry_ and, though he was very quickly and very definitely one hundred and one percent kind of sick at heart and his thumbs got vomit-stupid again trying to get through his mobile's lock screen, Ben pushed on anyway, tap-tap-tapping until he got to Peter's message, praying that it was more than…

_Sorry beautiful, I changed my mind._

When Ben opened the text amidst the jitter of his limbs and the hummingbird violence of his heart—that super-swift thrumming was called tachycardia, he knew that after a two ep guest role on _Holby City—_ Ben saw something quite like what he'd feared except not at all.

_Sorry sorry sorry, I'm going out of my mind!_

While he read this text another came through.

_The airport bus is stopped north of 3Arena for some reason and I swear I could walk faster than this._

The weirdest feeling of sadness hit Ben _thud_ right in the chest. Peter was not even two miles from where he right now stood but some part of him perceived that as a chasm full of zombies and crocodiles and fire and for a moment he was weak in the knee with strange grief at _how far,_ and then Ben became what he actually is: A really tall man with really long legs.

_I'm walking toward you right now…_

…he typed and then did exactly that, sending the message even as the little ellipsis showed Peter typing too…

_Got off the bus, I'll be there as soon as possible._

…and it was not wrong to say that Ben both snort-laughed and a-little-bit-cried at the words, fast-typing his own fucked-up reply…

_Im wakjjing on the north side of the ruver_

…and cradling his phone as he waited for more, looking down and managing to not run in to anyone because essentially he was a wall walking, obvious to anyone from five paces distant and…

_I am too._

…there it was and there again was the snort-laugh-kind-of-cry thing and a sudden need for Ben to stop and put his hands on his knees because he was so giddy he was dizzy and though _now_ was nothing like any other time with Peter now did feel like so many times _then,_ when laughing-crying was pretty much the most sensible response to the size that loving Peter made his heart and…

 _Breathe Ben, breathe_ he chanted to himself and so he breathed but he looked up along the road too but there was no one there yet, just a mirage made of his hope, so Ben Organa cleared his throat and shoved off his knees and he walked, a long-legged stride that Peter always matched because his legs were just as long and shit, Ben felt sweat trickling down his spine and apparently _every_ fucking thing was suddenly funny because the tickling trickle of it made him giggly and walked him fast-fast-faster still.

He would have seen Peter sooner but there was a gaggle of tourists standing there in the middle of things, photographing the Sam Beckett bridge and so Ben didn't see him and didn't see him and then he did.

Peter was running.

His expression was so serious and he was _running_ to get to Ben and the whole laughing thing went to fucking hell in a handbasket and instead Ben just went and damn well cried and started running, too.

So.

Here was the thing Peter McGregor promised himself he'd do when he went to meet Benjamin Organa in the city of Dublin: He swore he'd let his conscience be his guide.

It so happened that Peter's conscience was six foot three, yellow-haired, and really ready to mother-fucking kick his sorry _ass_ if he did the wrong thing and by the wrong thing Phay had meant _holding back._

And while his conscience didn't have to be so damned _aggressive_ about it, from the time he got on the plane to Ireland Peter vowed that he would be ready. Ready to hope all the hope that needed hoping, ready to say all that needed saying. So when the airport bus got snarled in traffic and he thought _I should get off and just run_ Peter McGregor was already standing.

When he saw Ben, Peter will tell you he stopped feeling his limbs because _he did stop feeling his limbs,_ all right? Ben used to call him pixie and fairy and Tinkerbell and sprite and so help him Peter would give even damn odds that he grew glassine wings in those seconds just before their bodies collided.

Here's a thing to know about momentum:

Momentum crashes two bodies together and, when done just right, those bodies do a beautiful thing. They wrap round one another, they hold so very tight arms shake and chests hiccup. If you're Peter McGregor momentum buries your face in a mane of shaggy-dark hair that smells of vanilla cologne, if you're Ben Organa momentum makes sun-orange hair tickle your nose and mouth.

Here's another thing to know: That momentous meeting? It happened right smack-dab in front of one of Ireland's most beautiful bridge, the one shaped like a harp, the one tourists always photograph. So tourists photographing the bridge just then, well in some of their photos they would later notice two men holding each other, cupping one another's faces, kissing. Some of the tourists, when they look at the photos later, will recognise the big guy from that British TV show though many won't. What everyone who notices those men in their photos will see are the smiles on their faces, the joy, maybe even, if the light was just right, the brightness of tears.

None of those tourists could _hear_ the men of course, so none heard what they said for those long minutes by that pretty bridge, but some of those things included:

"I missed you…"

"…so much."

There was a lot more to say, so Ben and Peter just stood there and said it, fearful the words would get lost in the walk to the B&B or in sudden shyness or in stupid fear.

So Peter said something tender that started with "I still…" and Ben replied, "…me too," while Ben said "I'm worried-afraid-hopeful-scared…" and Peter whispered, "…let's not be."

Who said _I want you…need you…touch me_ doesn't matter.

What does matters is what they were very soon going to do about it.

—  
_More story on its way! P.S. Here's Ben's[Tinkerbell ring tone for Peter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XApTH2mB-C0) you're welcome; here's the teeny [Ha'penny bridge](http://liveireland.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/webimage-D21E45D2-F07D-4629-BD85BB21CDABD10D.jpg), the unequaled [Samuel Beckett bridge](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/07/66/f3/0766f324c3736c8ac1a662662d958593.jpg), and [Peter running to Ben (yes it is)](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/164493473599/fic-peter-rabbit-ch-7-hahdf-when-peter). Also, I actually fast-typed a text so I could get Ben's misspellings, um, correctly spelled. WOOHOO P.S.: I just learned that my thumb conceit [essentially it is canon](https://hey-big-deal.tumblr.com/post/164536231634/bensvlo-maybe-its-because-i-have-big-thumbs) and I shall now do a tasteful victory lap thankyougoodnight._


	8. Sun Moon Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot happens in the shadows before dawn.
> 
> For Peter McGregor, maybe a little too much.

Ben loves the morning sky when the moon's still in it.

Though right now dawn was an hour off and the moon was a ghost ship, an almost-see-through crescent that would grow even fainter as the sun rose round the edge of the earth.

Though still dark Ben was wide awake, legacy of many years of early call times. His character in _Saints &Sinners_ had been a sympathetic fan-favorite, sympathy in part bought through war wounds applied in the makeup chair at five a.m. most days.

Ben took a deep breath, sighed it into the darkness. Just as well, he needed a little time to feel the easy fit of his skin, the ease down deep in his bones.

 _Ease._ That was it, wasn't it? Being with Peter again hadn't felt anything like Ben had feared because there had _been_ no fear.

Theirs had been a quiet disintegration so long ago, the relationship fading away like this crescent moon. They'd…disappeared from one another, distance over time doing what it does, until a Christmas came and went, then a birthday, then the realisation that they'd each seen the other with someone else, and somehow…they'd never talked about any of that.

Then at Nat's party just days ago there'd been the austere man. Hair gelled to darkness, a suit cut sharp as a blade and a spine straight as one too, and the only thing they'd talked about was a past long gone. No wonder it went to hell within three words.

Ben had feared that would happen again. Except now they were here, in a bright yellow bed and breakfast right on Dublin Bay, and if Ben squinted he could see the sun just painting the edge where sky and water met, all fears unfounded.

On the short train trip from the city centre Peter had held Ben's hand against his own chest, Ben had curled his big body close, and together they'd whispered away the journey. Once in their room they'd pulled the heavy curtains closed, barely opened overnight bags, hardly even untucked the tight-made bed, and crawled under the covers.

They'd talked a long time, fingers twined together. Talked about their quiet disintegration and all the little ones that had come after. Talk had turned to smiling silence, to kisses, to reaching down, then to laughing, half-arsed efforts not to get come on the sheets as they got each other off.

Ben smiled at the horizon, which saw fit to blush the barest bit. Or maybe that was his imagination. Ben grinned besotted wide. Peter used to say he had a good one.

Except it wasn't Ben's imagination when he heard it, clear as a call in the morning dark—Peter's absolutely heart-stopping scream.

*

Peter McGregor is a whole damn festival of dichotomies.

Put the man in a suit and his spine goes plumb line straight. Put him in trainers and he plops cross-legged on the ground. Give him a deadline and he's check-box efficient, fail to give him one and you'll _never_ get what you asked for.

Perhaps the place where Peter is at his contrasting worst is in his own self-worth, because here's a fact: early fame can do damned odd things to a brain. On the one hand a famous child will understand they are worth a great deal to those around them while, on the other, they have little control over that worth or indeed, their own life.

He might be thirty-four years old but Peter McGregor was even now torn between the certainty he was worth absolutely nothing now that he was grown and feeling he was one thousand percent just damn fine the way he was thankssomuch for asking.

Which is by way of explaining why, when Peter woke at four fifty-two in the morning and found the bed not only empty but cold, he assumed the worst. Ben had left.

His overnight bag said that that wasn't true. Memories of words whispered the night before hinted at the same. But both were given the irrational _fuck-the-fuck-off I know the truth_ treatment.

 _That_ truth looked this: Ben could probably live without the contents of that small bag, but who the hell could live with a man so cut-crystal delicate that he was still damaged from a past two dozen years gone and worse, who soothed that damage with the salve of sex with strangers?

Why _wouldn't_ you tip-toe away before dawn?

Fortunately Peter McGregor's not a _complete_ arse end. He's got his sister and her tendency to throw baked goods at his head to thank for that in part, and he _does_ pull his own weight, trying hard to see the shards of his own soul and mend what he can.

So, though Peter was semi-sure that Ben Organa had woke in the night, realised where he was and with who, though he was pretty certain Ben had then thought _what the absolute fuck_ and slipped shoes on beneath some wrinkled trousers then snuck himself away, though Peter was preparing himself to be not at all surprised by this half-believed reality, still and all the man went and made the effort of getting out of bed like a grown-up so that he could _verify._

And right off went fifteen-years-old again, flushing to the hairline. Because as he distractedly scratched his belly Peter realised the itch was from a smear of Ben's dried come and hadn't he daydreamed about _that_ when he was fifteen?

Short answer: Oh god yes. Long answer: Long before he had the courage to tell Ben how he felt about him, Peter masturbated to thoughts of him and do you want to know a thing? Peter will tell you a thing for free: His dick about fell off the year Ben decided to _make his body bigger._

Spring, summer, autumn, Ben was constantly in singlets or stripped to the waist and showing off beautiful biceps or eye-widening pecs and though Peter always thought he was kind of doing it on purpose, it was only later Peter learned that Ben was what he called 'a super slow developer sweetheart, because not only did I not notice you noticing me with the drooling lust I am seeing on your face right now, but I kinda didn't see _you,_ either.'

Apparently Peter's tardy darling was too shy to look at real boys, instead jerking off to magazine adverts, where pretty men sold colognes or underpants. It wasn't until Peter grew a full beard at nineteen that Ben looked up, looked out, and saw that Peter too had become very much a man.

"God," Peter whispered, touching his beautifully filthy belly and remembering how giddy they'd been that first weekend of their love affair, how every part of both of them was spread, touched, kissed. How every opening was explored deep with tongue and finger and cock. How just thinking about then could make his heart trip now.

 _Doesn't matter,_ Peter's brain helpfully interrupted. "Shut up, arse end," he said out loud, tripping into his own wrinkled trousers then quick-smart giving up on finding his shoes.

Feeling like his heart was absolutely in his throat, pounding away fit to make him hypoxia-giddy, Peter tip-toed out to the inn's back garden where the host had twice told them sat 'a little lovely swing.' But, upon spying the tiny two-seater, Peter found no big man rocking slow.

Logic told him that Ben was near, he was, of course he was, he'd never been cruel, he never _would_ be, but logic doesn't shout like panic does, so panic shouted _he's gone little Peter Rabbit, he's gone hop-hopped away._ Jaw grim-set Peter shuffled silent through the inn and out to the front garden, where the grass was dew-wet on his bare feet and the air chilled.

Drifting across the quiet grounds Peter looked toward Dublin Bay. He and Ben used to come down here to Dún Laoghaire on the DART all the time just to walk the two piers and watch little kids training to sail in the dinky boats. They'd eat chips and have ice cream and look out to the sea. Maybe Ben was on one of the piers. Maybe Ben—

For an entire very, very long second Peter McGregor stopped thinking.

For another really long moment his brain had a merry frolic with the far, far past.

Then, with the suddenness of a punch Peter's brain seized up, he looked down, and without further thought good Mr. McGregor did the one and only thing of which he was at that moment capable.

Peter screamed his head off.

—  
_Of course Peter's screams are[Domhnall's screams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dp31MWMjeM&feature=youtu.be) in the Peter Rabbit trailer. Next chapter the angst gives way to the good, the sweet, and above all the _ sex.


	9. Run, Ben, Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben ran faster when Peter stopped screaming. Because in silence there is all manner of suffering and it takes but a fraction of a fraction of a second to imagine terrible, awful—
> 
> —there, there he was, still as stone, quiet as death.
> 
> Peter.

Ben ran.

He started stripping his jumper off as he did, hip-checking a bollard because he couldn't see but that didn't stop him running. He stumbled up the pier's ramp, almost fell, but turned the momentum of the fall into running _faster._

Because Peter had stopped screaming.

It wasn't even fifty yard separating them but the road rose up, hid all but the roof of the B&B and Ben ran and ran because in silence there is all manner of suffering and it takes but a fraction of a fraction of a second to imagine terrible—

 _—there._ Peter. In the inn's front garden and Ben didn't stop to ask questions he hooked his arm around Peter's middle and he tripped, stumbled, staggered them both across the inn's deep lawn.

A dozen feet from where he'd found his love they fell.

Now Ben could hear the aborted sounds of Peter's distress, the choked grunts of air that couldn't come out or go in deep enough and hearing what he was hearing? It took half of a half of a _half_ second to be sure what was wrong but Ben didn't need even that much, he was yanking Peter's trousers off, and later they'd laugh about it—one man stripped to the waist, one bare from there down—but right now Ben was grateful there was nothing in the way of him _seeing_ Peter's naked skin.

Except the dark.

Didn't matter, didn't matter, the response would be the same whether Ben _saw_ the ants crawling over Peter's skin or not, and that response was the same as it had been during that first awful panic attack he'd been there for when Peter was seventeen: Clear the skin.

So with his stripped-off jumper Ben rubbed Peter's bare legs down, he rubbed hard and rubbed rough, because Peter's animal brain needed the grounding of the wool's rasp, needed to feel the scrape-scraping on his skin, needed to know Ben was wiping away the ants that would bite-bite- _bite_ him, bite him a hundred times until he cried and swelled and cried and—

—they call it a trip-wire response, how the body learns to associate fear with a situation and then triggers itself years later when it thinks it's in a situation that's similar.

Ben wasn't there when eight-year-old Peter was on a photo shoot in the American South, standing little boy tall, hands on hips and smiling bright even when he first felt a tickle at his ankles.

Ben wasn't there for the photographer's admonishment to the child, hissing him to stillness and then shouting obscenities when the little boy suddenly could not be stilled.

Ben was not there to hear Peter's screams as the red ants started to bite and bite and bite.

But Ben is here right now and he will tell you that if someone gave him the ability to go back in time once, just once, only one time, he'd forego dinner with a fucking celebrity, he'd skip putting money down on a sure-thing sports event, and instead Ben would go right to the five minutes before Peter stepped back and back and back—because little kids obey when grown-ups tell them to do things like "back up more for the love of god"—he'd stop Peter stepping right into an ankle high ants' nest and Ben'd snatch that little boy up and plunk him onto the grass and he'd make sure he was safe and sound and there were no ants on him, then he'd fucking _knee_ that cock right in her groin and he'd shout a couple obscenities at her for good measure, then he'd spit in the eye of Peter's stupid parents and _then_ he'd do what he was doing right now.

"It's okay, baby, it's okay, they're gone, they're all gone, no ants, no ants, there's nothing there but lemme see between your toes baby, spread your toes can you do that so I can check?"

Peter couldn't because panic has no switch, the adrenaline, the shakes, the weakness has to jangle itself through your body in its own fits-and-starts time and so Ben did what he was always gonna do anyway.

"That's it sweetheart, that's good," he praised, prying each toe apart himself, squinting in the streetlight-dark and sure enough there were garden ants between Peter's toes, little black-bodied and harmless, but Ben swiped them out with his big fingers, swiped between every toe, twice, and then he ran the rough jumper over Peter's legs again, crooning, "So good, very good, thank you, thank you baby. Now can you turn over real quick so I can make sure we got them baby?"

Though Ben was about to turn Peter himself he didn't have to, his love rolled over start-stop jerky, joints stiff, and Ben wiped and wiped with that jumper, from bum to feet, once, twice, three times.

In the middle of Ben's fourth rub down with the jumper Peter turned around, reached, and in less than a blink his arms were full.

"It's okay, baby," Ben whispered into his hair, "they're gone they're gone, they were just weenie ones this time, just tiny little ones with no teeth, but they're gone, we got 'em. Can you breathe with me now please can you?"

Ben took a noisy-big breath until his chest was pushing hard against Peter's and he patted Peter's back— _one two three one two three_ —until he felt him draw a breath down deep. For another count they held it and then exhaled, again and again and again.

When Peter's arms were probably shaking more from the morning chill than the adrenaline, Ben whispered, "Perfect, that's good, we're good now I think, okay? We should go inside and get warm. Let's take a shower. I really need a shower now, I ran all the way from the pier and you know how bad I stink after running, like some sort of farm animal."

Peter's sudden watery giggling was—solemn promise, Scout's honour swear—the first time Ben took a _real_ breath in the last ten minutes. The relief of it flooded through him so intensely his muscles went to mush and he tipped right over on that pretty grass, taking Peter with him.

And thus two men were found bare-arsed and bare-chested in a public place, one on top of the other, when the paramedics arrived.

Through it all, not only had neither man seen the eight inn guests gathered at the garden's edge (three of whom had called 999 at various points after the screaming), but neither noticed the blue flash of the ambulance lights until some very nice paramedics were trying to figure out which half-nude man was in distress.

And though panic happens quicker than the mind can think, the aftermath can feel syrup slow.

So the thirty minutes between a stethoscope to his chest and being tucked snug-tight beneath their room's duvet felt three hours long to aching joints and thick head, but Peter knew it wasn't.

He also knew he'd panicked over something that had been nothing, not really. Garden ants don't bite, the couple dozen that had skittered over his feet and up his ankles couldn't have done him the harm those fire ants did when he was a boy. Peter also knew he felt bad for his response and wanted to apologise to Ben for it, but it turned out Peter couldn't.

Because Ben was passed clean out, face half buried in his pillow, both of Peter's hands clasped between his. Drool had just begun pooling at the corner of his mouth.

Watching in soft-smiling fascination as it dripped syrup slow onto the pillow Peter took deep breaths— _one two three—_ and he decided a few thing.

He would try hard not be embarrassed for things he could not help. He would get off his arse and do more about the things he _could._ And he would love Ben Organa forever.

Peter got started on the third of his three vows the next morning. Well, in the afternoon really, because they slept like dead men until three p.m.

Just as well, a couple of ants needed most of that time to make it out of the wrinkles of Peter's trousers, under the door, and into the front garden.

—  
_I had no idea Peter was actually having a panic attack. So. Um, the sex I keep promising should theoretically be on its way next chapter. I don't know any more, do you?_


	10. Amal Gupta Puts Up With So Much

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm going to kill him," Phasma McGregor swore.
> 
> Amal Gupta sighed. He removed all breakables from his boss' reach.
> 
> He has been here before.

"I'll kill him."

Phasma McGregor paced her large office, heels _click-click-clicking_ like tiny gun fire.

On the other side of her massive desk, Amal Gupta patiently watched his boss pace. He has been here before.

"I'll kill him Amal, I will. Then I'll bake him. Into a cake."

Phasma gestured and reflexively Amal clutched her mobile more tightly to his chest. There would be no shattering repeat of what happened after the Malahide Farms merger. Not on his watch.

Phasma stopped pacing. "I told him," she said plaintively, sadly, murderously. "Didn't I tell him?"

Another gesture and they both glanced at her mobile, on which resided a five-word text.

_I'm on my way back,_

In reply to those simple words Phasma had, indeed, 'told' her brother. Her telling had included _you've only been gone two days, you promised to stay for five, you can't give up on Ben so easily._ The telling had also been liberally festooned with _fucking fuck,_ _bell-ended arse fuck_ and _shitty damned poor mother-fucking effort._

Walking into his boss' office about thirty seconds after she'd sent her reply, Amal had caught her in the act of weighing her pricy phone as if in preparation for a nice hard _hurl._

"'You stay and you make it work, Peter.' That's what I said Amal, because that's what he needs to do, you know?"

Amal Gupta knew. Amal Gupta knew many things.

He knew he was due for a pay rise. He knew he'd bring this fact up some time tomorrow. Amal knew that Peter McGregor would continue to make repeated, often spotty efforts to grow up. He also knew Phasma would make repeated and profane efforts to help him do that. And Amal knew that while she did this she'd fly off the handle prematurely, she'd throw things, and she'd complain _here we go again._

Except.

Except Amal Gupta did not think so, no. This time did not have the flavour of 'again.' That single text from Peter did, yes, have all the earmarks of giving up.

Except.

Well, except Peter McGregor did not tend to send one defensive text when he could send a string of them, inevitably starting strident and ending with "and until you just calm your shit down Phay I've paid Amal not to tell you where I'm staying tonight."

Peter had not done that this time. (Amal had checked his PayPal twice.) What Peter _had_ done was something he does not do, not in high dudgeon with his sister, not in a hurry with Amal himself, not any time ever at all.

Peter had failed to correctly punctuate.

Though Peter Alan Alexander McGregor might be taking his own sweet time growing up, though he might sometimes be a knob, an arse, or a bell-end according to his sister, Amal will tell you right now that despite these issues Peter McGregor double-damn well does not fail to punctuate _properly._

So, that comma in Peter's text? That weirdly placed little bit of nothing-much? Amal suspected that there was a story there, one far longer than five words. If he was a guessing man, and Amal was _totally_ a guessing man, Amal was going to guess that Phay's big brother had maybe, just maybe, run out of plane-catching time before he could finish typing, that he sent what he could, and that the rest of a far more interesting story was still to be told.

Except try telling that to Phasma, who was busy whipping herself into such a froth she was now throwing paperclips at his head and shouting "—going home I said, so give me my phone!"

Amal Gupta sighed. He has been here before.

He knew that Phasma knew that he would not be giving her her phone. Phasma is a venting sort of person and if she does not have weights close to hand she vents with _what's in her hand._ Every time he replaces her mobile he spends progressively more money, thinking that one of these times the cost-to-benefit ratio will stop her flinging the damn thing across the room our out the window of her Merc.

Not yet.

So Amal continued to clutch his boss' mobile, Phasma barreled toward the parking garage without it, and the second he could no longer hear the click-click-click of Phasma's heels, Amal Gupta nipped into the executive toilets and he made a phone call.

The message he left was long and detailed and cheery because that was how Amal rolls, but it ended with the most important bit and that was this.

"—best do something quickly Peter, because I am pretty sure she's coming home to murder you with push pins."

—  
_Amal Gupta puts up with so much shit. Phasma's totally going to give him that pay rise. And a couple weeks from now Peter's going to send a triple-figure sum to Amal's PayPal._


	11. Kintsugi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Growing up wasn't easy for Peter McGregor. Because not one week went by where some class wit wasn't making a bucktoothed face and bunny hands at him. Not one week where someone didn't ask if he was rich. Not one, not one, not a single one where anyone forgot who he used to be.
> 
> Then there was Ben.
> 
> And things were fucking _worse_ for him.

Peter McGregor met Ben Organa when he was fifteen-years-old.

By then his hair had grown a shade darker than the childhood shock of orange, but people still recognised little Peter Rabbit, oh yes they did.

And that was mostly fine. There'd be a nice smile, an _oh I remember you,_ maybe even a kid's picture book with his likeness to sign, and though Peter was usually like any awkward teenager with these strangers, that sort of recognition was mostly _fine._

But mostly fine wasn't how it went in school.

There, not one week went by where some wit wasn't making a bucktoothed face and bunny hands at him. Not one week where someone didn't ask if he was rich. Not one, not one, not _one_ week passed where Peter didn't think _please make it go away, let them go away, make me go away._

Then there was Ben.

And things were fucking _worse_ for him.

Because where Peter was slight enough to sometimes disappear, Ben was bigger than everyone.

Man-high at a few months over fifteen, Ben Organa slouched, hung his head, curled his shoulders, but these didn't do one damn bit of good hiding his six-three frame. And though his size would have been oh so much more than enough to rally the bullies round, there was something worse.

Ben wore a leg brace.

It was a simple thing, just a few straps, molded plastic, a bit of metal. Meant to correct a weakness to a foot that kind of dragged, it didn't matter the brace's _why,_ it mattered that it was at all. Because once a kid caught sight of it beneath Ben's trousers the taunts of clubfoot started, the Quasimodo leg-dragging, the kids acting like whatever Ben had was _catching._ In class or cafeteria he'd always be left sitting alone in a sea of empty chairs.

Peter never noticed any of this, wrapped up as he was in his own miseries. Then he'd come late to a lecture one day and, keen to keep eyes off him, he crept quiet to the empty chair nearest the door. To a chair beside Ben.

That was the end of that and the beginning of them.

Heads-together close nearly overnight, they forgot about everyone else. All the teasing turned into nothing but white noise, indistinguishable from the clunk-clunk of the Dart that they took all over Dublin, or the growl of the buses they boarded in a long-legged rush.

They were fifteen when they met, Peter and Ben, still soft in childish places and in so many ways so wonderfully _young._ With a childhood spent mostly with adults, Peter especially loved the juvenile and so they were forever tucking themselves small into wardrobes to giggle-hide from parents, peeking through doors marked 'private,' scrambling over park fences at midnight.

Park fences, park fences…oh how Ben remembered _that_ park fence, that one summer night so many years ago.

They were sixteen then and things were little-by-little-by-little changing between them. Sidelong gazes lingered with cheeks going pink after, and that night in the park, that night Ben learned something important about Peter. About what Peter liked done to his body.

Tipsy on their own daring they'd clambered over the rickety railing at the west end of Merrion Square, and once in they'd scampered around like rabbits, splashed in the fountain, lounged next to the Oscar Wilde statue, stared at the stars. It was after two in the morning when, drunk with tiredness and glee, they climbed the fence out and Peter slipped while going over, falling heavy against the blunt tops of a couple posts.

Oh Peter loved the spectacular bruises that bloomed on his long torso the next day, black-and-blue contusions so large even Ben's big hands couldn't cover them.

He crowingly called the bruises war wounds, showed them off to Ben for weeks as they marched from purples to greens to yellows. And each time he lifted his shirt Peter showed more of his body, and each time Ben gentled his hands over the body Peter showed. "Do they hurt," he'd whisper soft. "Not any more," Peter'd whisper back.

That was the summer Peter knew he loved Ben and though he didn't go out of his way to collect bruises to display, he sure did display all the ones he got.

Because growth spurt seventeen meant Peter went a sort of lanky that left his limbs stupid, arms forever thwacking into cupboards or legs into table corners, the evidence littered all up and down his pretty white skin.

Eighteen and he fell out of a friend's parked truck and the road rash made him laugh but Ben crooned soft curses as he so-careful and slow plucked bits of asphalt from Peter's bare shoulder and arm.

Then they were nineteen and Peter's beard was red and beautiful and _big_ and then so was Ben's muscled body and…and…and…

…they became lovers natural as breathing.

Like their other first, this one came with the same disinterest in what anyone else saw or thought. So maybe Peter never did notice his mother hiding her frown at their joined hands, and maybe Ben never saw his father open his mouth to say something, then just leave that thing unsaid.

Which was fine really, because Phasma took up the slack, vocal enough for a dozen. When she saw her brother and his bestie nuzzling each other's necks that first time, Phay hooted and clapped. When Peter panicked about a six-month anniversary present, she helped him shop. And that new year the three of them shared a hotel room in London? Well, Phay only threatened bodily harm the _third_ time they woke her with their grunting.

It was that trip fourteen years gone when Ben Organa and Peter McGregor had another first, because it was that long ago holiday and Phasma's threat of fratricide that taught the two young men what Ben loved done to _his_ body.

Quiet-quiet and so softly careful, that was how Ben Organa loved to be loved.

So over the days and weeks and years Peter learned to whisper wet against Ben's ears until goosebumps blazed comet trails across Ben's galaxy of moles. He murmured against his mouth until Ben whimpered desire back into his. Peter fluttered feathery lashes against a noble nose, against pointed nipples, against fingertips and earlobes and eyes.

What Ben loved Peter loved to give him, so he was loved with kisses on collar bones and the sleepy rocking of hips. Loved with long red hair tickling his neck, long fingers wrapped round his cock. And in return Ben loved to press moans into Peter's hot skin, loved the scent of it after he'd come. In that after Ben loved being held close as a babe, spoiled with endearments, pampered with caresses.

So that is what they gave and they got in their years together, loving each other sweetly and gently and long, laughing and curling close.

Though sometimes, just sometimes, things were different.

Sometimes Peter craved his 'war wounds,' sometimes he wanted to be marked by what they did. Ben wondered if maybe after years of doing as he was told Peter loved proof that he controlled his own body, that at last he could do with it what he pleased. Fingers stroking a fading bruise, Ben asked once but Peter only shrugged. "I don't know. Sometimes I just…like it."

So Ben did what Peter sometimes liked. He drove tooth and nail into each bit of flesh Peter bared, he scratched and bit, bit and scratched, until together they made Peter's body into living kintsugi, white skin criss-crossed with mending red.

"Again?"

They're thirty-four now and, as it was during that very _first_ first, Dublin had been a perfect haven. In their tiny Dún Laoghaire inn they'd learned one another all over again, touched each other slow and sweet, as they had when they were young. But then came Peter's midnight doubt, a wire tripped, and suddenly the city where they'd come of age wasn't right, now that they were men.

So it was the most natural thing to come to the city where they'd each learned to be themselves _by_ themselves. To London they came and soon they'd come, oh yes, in Peter's big, warm bed.

"Again?"

Lying heavy between Ben's legs Peter nodded his assent, body tense, prey craving the predator's claw.

So Ben used those big hands to sssssscratch down Peter's back, his reward a moan stuttered thick, then a sigh like a burden lifted.

"Again?"

Peter shivered and nodded, tipping his head, so Ben bit at a beard-stubbled neck, then sucked the toothmarked skin hard enough to blossom up war wounds for later.

"Again. Again. Again."

Ben sucked at the skin of Peter's naked arms and instead of shaking, those arms grew steady. He gathered in his teeth the lean flesh on Peter's chest, then sucked until small nipples got plump. But it was scratching Peter's long white back that made him go heavy on top of Ben, dense with giddy desire, and it was that which started him humping slick-sloppy against Ben's balls, the crease of his thigh, messy and random and unfocused.

"Mmmy lovey m'lovey," he slurred, then startled. Oh but it had been an age since he'd said that endearment outside his own fever dreams, so long that it sounded like a secret he'd let slip. It wasn't a secret, it never had been, even when they'd grown apart.

So he said it again, "My lovey, my _lovey,"_ and bowed his head.

When they were young that had meant a cascade of long red hair falling like a curtain around their faces, a tiny sanctuary. Peter's hair was a fussy sort of short now, so he brought his arms close, whispered, "I'll grow it, lovey, long as it'll go."

In reply Ben pressed their foreheads together, wrapped a leg round Peter's hip and finally, finally, _finally_ Peter took hold of his cock and slid into Ben's body.

Sweat and slick smoothed their slow rut, moans fueled it, and for as much as Ben loved tender and careful he lacked anything like patience, so he grabbed hold of two plump handfuls of arse, grunting and urging Peter to quicker thrusts, to a fast coming, but no, nope, the good Mr. McGregor would not be hurried. It might be years since they've been together but Peter _remembered_ how this goes.

So Peter stayed slow and Ben writhed under him, chest pushing, back bowing, hips lifting, a familiar sinuous roll again and again.

Peter went slow and Ben raised both his long legs, clamping them tight around Peter's waist, a supplication through strength.

Even when Ben clutched his own hair, fists tangling in all that soft black, Peter thrust in-out-shallow-deep slow-slower-slowest.

Then it happened as Peter knew it would, Ben turned his head and moaned _please_ please _please,_ a pleasure-drunk litany smeared spit-wet against Peter's skin.

As much as he loved Ben's want and giving him what he begged for, Peter loved most being _of use,_ because since he was a gap-toothed boy he's craved that, been _taught_ to crave it, and if that was problematic then _everything_ was god damn problematic and all Peter could do was—

"Please"

—give this, take this, shelter his arms closer while Ben begged—

"Please _please"_

—he could make this last like they used to do—

 _"Please_ please _please"_

—then when Ben lifted his legs higher, tucked his arms between their chests, hid his face against his shoulder, babbling breathy nonsense sounds, Peter knew it was time.

Arm sliding under Ben's neck to tuck him close, Peter spit and spit into his free hand then pushed it between them. Still slow, _still,_ he stroked Ben. It took awhile because sometimes it just does and that's good too, then all those big muscles went rigid and with a volume that has always made Peter giddy, Ben came spurt after spurt between their bellies, warm and slick. For long seconds Ben didn't move but then he was at it again, writhing chest-back-hip because he's a rare boy is Ben, he never wants to be fucked more than when he just has been, so he gracelessly thumped his thigh against Peter's ribs until a skinny arm hooked under his knee and hiked that leg high, spreading his arse wide so Peter could push in deep-deep-deep.

Then it happened as Ben knew it would, Peter keened and so Ben thrashed, Peter tried to kiss him but could only huff against his mouth, and finally Ben did it again, he dug his nails in, right there at the wings of Peter's shoulder blades, right there where the _need_ was, where the _moans_ were pent, and Peter pushed into Ben's hair his neck his _body_ and he came and came.

After, he cried.

A little.

Like he sometimes used to do when there were still so many first for them, from anniversaries to misunderstandings, apologies to acceptances.

Because beneath his sharp suits and severe hair, behind the frown of "Mister" and his judgmental gaze, tender is what Peter McGregor has always been. It's what strangers saw and loved in his childish smile, it's what bullies saw and mocked in his serious gaze. Tenderness was, is, and will always be Peter's _power,_ the thing that let him look outside himself all those years ago and see a boy hurt worse than he was. For years Peter buried that power down deep, sublimated it with severity and denial, but this long-dormant gift, well he's going to remember it soon, he is.

Though first a few _other_ firsts are going to happen.

Peter is going to be absolutely gross and wipe his tear-snotty face in Ben's hair while Ben laughs himself stupid.

They're going to fall asleep in a tangle of limbs, still talking about everything and nothing.

Then hours-days-weeks later they're going to tentatively tip-toe toward mutually life-changing plans.

And that is when Peter McGregor will lose his shit and make a big, damn, dumb mistake.

But first, first, absolutely _first_ Ben Organa is going to wake alone in Peter's bed.

To the sound of shouting.

—  
_First, first, first: This will all end happy I promise! Second, here is[Ben's leg brace](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/168506134104/fic-kintsugi-peter-rabbit-growing-up-wasnt), used for just what the story says it's for. Finally, [Kintsugi](https://www.google.com/search?q=kintsugi&client=firefox-b-ab&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjlhIv8uOHWAhVBYVAKHb99BREQ_AUICigB&biw=1348&bih=638#imgrc=_) is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold- or silver-dusted lacquer—I love the idea of Peter's white-white skin being 'repaired' with the red of Ben's loving scratches. Should anyone anyone _ anyone _want to draw that…_


	12. Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben has always loved the size of Phay's heart. Filled with passion she's always been, that nowhere more evident than in defense of her brother.
> 
> And oh little Peter Rabbit has always needed champions.

He's always liked Phasma, has Ben.

In a world of little, she is big, and they've both always known that means managing assumptions about their brains and bodies, means choosing battles, forgoing far more than they fought.

Yet more than a shared bond over their burden of _big,_ Ben has always loved the size of Phay's heart. Filled with passion she's always been, that nowhere more evident than in defense of her brother.

And oh little Peter Rabbit has always needed champions.

After _Saints &Sinners_ made him a household name, Ben understood so much more about that man's childhood than he had before.

Because Ben was twenty-five when his fame happened and still the spotlight _burned._ At first it was a wonder, his hard work seen at last. Even better, he got to _talk_ about it. Then came too many pressures from too many places, the covert disrespect from strangers and the casual entitlement they believed they had to your time. Interviewers pressured for plot secrets and cast gossip, fans treated you like a check-box item and took photos of you in public toilets.

It's been a couple-year remove from the intensity of all that and Ben's still not sure if there's a good sort of fame—and he was always old enough to say no. Peter was five when his parents began using his likeness in their marketing, with no say in what they did with his face or his fame. Was it any surprise that the child became father to the man, and once grown Peter still did not know what to do with his own autonomy?

Phay though, oh she fought for that placid boy long before he learned to fight for himself. There wasn't much a seven-year-old could do to help a brother only a single year older, but she _could_ and she _did_ throw clods of dirt at horrid boys who pulled Peter's "faggy orange hair." She _could_ and she _did_ tell their parents when a chat show host or photographer pinched Peter's skinny little arm if he looked tired. But mostly, mostly Phay was Peter's wall against the world, solid and strong, a back against which he pressed his face on those nights he couldn't sleep for worry about the next day's responsibilities.

And from the sound of the shouting, Phay is still as big as ever.

"—and another thing Peter Alan Alexander McGregor!"

Ben sighed. He should go downstairs. He should. He would. Soon. In just another delicious moment…just after he…when he wasn't so warm…comfortable and…

Ben turned. Face-planted into Peter's pillow. He breathed and breathed and breathed deep.

This bed, this pillow, oh they smelled _good._ Like sweat and spit and _Peter._ He'd come of age to this scent, Ben did, his body was hardwired for it. The smell of Peter, his skin, his _everything,_ this was what sex smelled like to Ben. Probably always would.

_More._

Duvet tugged high over his head, Ben slithered down, down, down. To were wet spots imperfectly dry, to where _scent_ is strongest, and though he's thirty-four years old Ben flushed and felt naughty, like that time, oh that time they were nineteen.

They were new lovers then, at the back of a hot bus in the middle of summer, sweat dripping down Ben's spine. He tugged up his t-shirt a little, so the gap between jeans and his back showed, and he bit his lip and side-eyed Peter until his blushing sweetheart slid a hand down into that humid gap. A wiggle, the bow of a back, and one single skinny finger slithered down into the crack of Ben's ass, both giddy with imagining Peter's finger going further, going down, down, down and inside deep.

They had bulges in their jeans by the time they clamoured off the bus and, pulses hammering in their throats so they were sure everyone could see, they snuck into the art gallery toilets, where they wanked in separate stalls to the sound of each other's soft moans.

The rest of that day Ben shamelessly _sniffed_ Peter's hand, and though he isn't nineteen and hormonal any more, Ben still wants that wonderful scent of things. So yes, he snuffled under Peter's duvet, needing the primitive scent of ass, mingled come, the now-dried drip-drip of the sweat that had run from Peter's body onto his, then down to soak the sheet.

It was salty and sour and sweet under here, it was perfect, profane and—

"—another thing—"

And it was well past time for Ben to get out of this bed.

Peter had faced Phay alone long enough.

_—  
Short chapter is short but we're in the home stretch! P.S. Phay is not yelling what you think she is yelling._


	13. Enter Phay…Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once upon a time there was a baby named Peter, and that baby's good luck ran out pretty much the day he was born.
> 
> You see, little Peter emerge from the womb with big green eyes, a glorious brush-fire of orange hair, and the ability to make his mother and father a great deal of money…

Once upon a time there was a baby named Peter, and that baby's good luck ran out pretty much the day he was born.

You see, not only did Peter McGregor emerge from the womb with big green eyes, little Peter was also born with a glorious brush-fire of orange hair. Now even in Ireland, where gingers are common, that magnificent head full made him a strikingly uncommon child. So rare was he that strangers stopped his parents on the streets to coo at his beauty, to caress his plump little infant limbs.

With all that, was it any wonder his mam and his da photographed their firstborn so much? That they showed those photos to everyone? That eventually someone suggested they put his pretty likeness on _packaging?_

His face an actual registered trademark of multi-national agri-business McGregor's Meadows by age four, Peter McGregor can not remember a time before _produce._ Some of his earliest memories are of fisting a little hand around the green tops of carrots, then giggling because the ferny tops tickled his nose. He remembers biting into purple asparagus tops he was supposed to be holding like a bouquet, then doing the same with nasturtiums and crying because he didn't know they were tongue-tingling spicy.

Cute little Peter grew up being looked at, is the thing, he grew up being important and of use. But eventually Peter grew _too_ much, so eventually he was no longer quite worth looking at and therefore was no longer of use. And the thing is? Peter knew that. At nine when he was asked to hunch down to hide his already-lanky height. At eleven when he posed for what became the last of an already-dwindled series of adverts. On the cusp of puberty Peter knew he absolutely wasn't useful any more and that's a shitty thing to know about yourself at any age, much less when you're just a kid.

This by way of explaining why, when Peter woke to the sound of his sister in their flat, when he lifted his head to see her tip-toeing away from the half-open bedroom door, when he rose without waking Ben, went downstairs in his snugged-tight dressing gown and Phay proceeded to lose her mind at him…well Peter lost his right back.

"I knew it!" she shouted gleeful the second he stepped into the kitchen, a fistful of flung teabags softly pelting his face and the hand clutching the collar of his robe. Dropping the tea tin to the counter, Phay flung her arms around Peter and hugged him hard. "I'm so happy for you I could scream."

Instead of screaming though, Phay hugged and she hugged and she hugged some more. She pranced in place, she kissed his nose, she pressed her forehead to his. Then, after a couple long moments of the two of them grinning dopey at each other, Peter stepped away, he stepped over scattered teabags, and he went about the business of making tea. Meanwhile Phay went and made demands.

"Tell me everything," she said, clattering saucers and spoons and whatever else was close and would clatter. While some of Peter's first memories are of vegetables, yes, his _very_ first is of his sister banging their mutual toys one against the other and laughing her tow-head clean off. Phay has always vented both her bliss and her sorrow with vigour.

So, standing in the kitchen over clattering cups of hot tea, Peter McGregor took a deep breath and he told his sister everything. Told her about a bus that went too slow and kisses by a bridge, about a bay-side bed and breakfast and harmless ants, he told her of memories shared and new ones made. Peter told Phay everything.

He didn't _show_ her though. So the love bites and the scratches? _That_ was an accident.

"HOLY SHIT!"

He'd bent to finally pick up those teabags—another of Peter's earliest memories was fetching things Phay had chucked across the room, into the bath, or down the toilet—and when he stood back up he forgot to clutch. The collar of his robe opened wide.

So did Phay's eyes.

Peter froze, watching his sister look at the bite marks low on his neck. He could see her counting. He watched her gaze drop, drop, drop.

Phay blinked, her gaze riveted on the heart scratched red and raised into the skin of Peter's chest. After a long time she blinked her gaze back up, searching his eyes, seeing nothing there but serenity. Then Phay did what Phay was bound to do.

She vented her bliss, jumping in place and hooting at volume, "Peter's gonna get married, Peter's gonna get married!"

After that the woman could not be hushed. So it was to the sound of her cackling joy that Ben Organa woke, it was to Phay's gleeful hollering that he rose, it was to her predictions of picket fences and fat-bellied babies that he dressed.

By all rights when he at last pottered into the kitchen he should've been ready for her mass to body-slam his but he wasn't, so Ben _oofed_ and stumbled, he laughed and hugged, while Phay squealed and shouted and hugged and Peter…

…vanished.

Muttering _loo_ and _shower_ and _back soon,_ Peter McGregor disappeared from the room and down the hall and right into his own fucking head. There to wallow in confusion and anger, there to mutter to himself the worst epithets he knew, there to hiss "worthless" at himself, there to hiss "useless" and "stupid," and "whore," his brain going round and round with the same unkind curses as it's done for decades now, in a cycle that began when he was a teenage boy and one from which he's struggled to emerge, always going about it in the worst ways.

He'd tried anger at his parents first and though it had assuaged his sense of personal failure awhile, the vindication was short-lived. After that he went for rejection of their fucked-up love, then moved on to rejecting their plans for his future, _their_ anger, and their belated help. Then Peter went for moody and demanding, took what they gave and then said he didn't want it. Finally, in a fit of what-the-fuck-rebellion, Peter started selling his body for pleasure, yet somehow the pleasure was never his own.

"Fucking mess, fucking mess, fucking mess."

That's what he was, from top to bottom. Even Phay could barely deal with him any more, so there was absolutely no way he was going to _marry_ somebody into the burden of his shit, hell-the-fuck _no._

So Peter vanished and, in the manner of so many who've not yet learned to ask for the help they need, Peter hid, quiet-clicking the loo door behind him, locking it tight, then turning the shower on to hide the sounds of his panic.

He got under the spray and went to hands and knees, arms stretched out so he could breathe through the knot in his chest, and round and round his brain went, trying futilely to find a way out of what he's always been and doesn't know how _not_ to be.

Yes, everyone knows Peter's parents screwed up, that they let their boy's childhood be of use to everyone but the boy whose childhood it was, but Peter knows it's him who keeps picking at the scabs of old wounds, then in self-pity weeping that he bleeds.

Hot water pounding against the sweet scratches on his back, Peter McGregor thinks that he is so very, very tired.

*

So here's a thing. Ben Organa is an actor and actors are spies. They watch and you don't know you're being watched. The good ones remember even the littlest gestures, tics, tilts of the head. And the really good spies, like Ben? They remember that shit for _years._

So when Peter ghosted away Ben noticed, and he _knew._ Knew that the smile on Peter's face was paste instead of diamond, knew the loo door closed too quietly, the shower came on too quick.

Ben Organa knew that Peter was hiding.

He let him.

And Ben did some things.

He passed a measure of time in raucous and then quiet conversation with the other person who knew. While he did, he drank his tea. Then he had a coffee. Then Ben made three plates of toast. And about five minutes after a shower turned off, he kissed Phay's cheek and he brought two of those plates to Peter's room.

He was winging it, was Ben. He walked into the room with the intention of offering breakfast, a kiss, and a few words— _I'm here, I can help, I love you—_ but two paces through the door and Ben abandoned the toast plates on Peter's desk and joined his love on the end of the bed.

They sat there in silence awhile and Ben wanted to say all the stuff he's said for years. About what's gone being gone, about how regret can't change _then,_ but holding on to regret sure as hell changes _now._ Ben wanted to say _I'm here I can help I love you_ but he didn't.

No, Ben the spy did something he hardly ever does. He _tattled._

"So, did I ever tell you that I'm on medication for anxiety and have been since I moved to London?"

The bedroom was very quiet for what seemed a very long time. Then two water drops splish-splashed from Peter's hair onto the back of his hand and Peter looked at Ben, blink-blinking glassy eyes wide. He wiped his mucusy nose with the sleeve of his dressing gown, but the damn thing started running again immediately.

"And, did I ever tell you that right after _Saints &Sinners_ sold global I had to go into therapy? Because some days the anxiety was so bad I couldn't get out of bed for fear I was going to fuck everything up. My therapist's name is Ben, too, as it turns out."

Ben reached over and wiped at Peter's leaky nose with his bare fingers. Dichotomously this has always grossed Peter right the fuck out _and_ made him love Ben more.

"Yeah, so did I ever tell you any of that?"

—  
_So this right here is[baby Peter's](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/171235435194/fic-peter-rabbit-penultimate-chapter-once-upon) hair and like his parents I'd have lost my ever-lovin' mind. But let's be honest, okay? ~~Domhnall~~ Peter now would cause me to lose my ever-lovin' mind. P.S. I swear to god I intend the next chapter to be the last. P.P.S. She said that three chapters ago._


	14. The End is the Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you go round the back to get to the front, sometimes you go back to the beginning to find the end and sometimes, well sometimes you take the story back by telling it yourself.

"…he was lucky it wasn't the pistachios…"

"What?"

"What?"

Ben rolled over, his butt baring itself from beneath a blanket. Without looking away from his laptop Peter patted the warm hills.

"Come back to bed."

Peter slung a trackie-covered leg over Ben and kept typing. "I _am_ in bed."

"You're sitting up and telling stories with your _clothes_ on."

Continuing to grumble and grouse, Benjamin Organa-McGregor curled into a mumbling comma against Peter's hip. He dozed for what may have been a minute or a month, woke with a start and sighed, "S'it that Dún Laoghaire day bunny bear?"

Bunny bear chased rabbit-quick after his thought, put a punctuated flourish on a sentence, then ran a hand through Ben's hair. "I told you I can't talk when I'm typing."

"Phhft."

Peter slid his laptop onto the nightstand and himself beneath the blanket, kicking trackies off as he went. "Phhft back, Venus."

Grinning sleepy, Ben spread big limbs until his prey wriggled close, then fly-trapped himself round Peter's body. Purring warm at last he lipped at Peter's messy morning plait and murmured, "'stachio day?"

Sometimes you go round the back to get to the front, sometimes you go back to the beginning to find the end of a bad thing and the start of good. And sometimes you try to write it all down because it's time you told your own tale.

"Yep."

Ben pulled the hair elastic off Peter's braid with his mouth, spit it over his shoulder—'This is why I can't ever find even one' 'This is why you have eleven thousand hair combs'—and started poorly undoing the plait with a spit-sloppy tongue. "Mmmmm?"

Their Sunday ritual of cuddling, unplaiting, and grousing well underway, Peter told Ben where he was in their story.

*

_Ben Organa bloomed late…_

He was over six foot tall at sixteen, yes. His chest, his arms, and his legs filled out to match broad shoulders a year later, sure. But in one important way, Ben bloomed late indeed.

On the very day it happened Dublin Bay was a syrupy splash up against stones, the sky grey. He and Peter were sitting at the pier's edge as usual, heels gently tap-tapping the rocks. Ben was doing what he often did, watching Peter stare at the lighthouse across the way. Though this time Ben wasn't counting how long Peter could go before blinking, no, Ben was busy butt-wiggling.

He'd been trying for long weeks, had Ben. Trying to touch Peter _different._ Trying to say without saying, "I _saw._ That day we ditched classes and went to Poolbeg? I saw you looking at me after I took off my shirt. I saw _how_ you looked at me Peter, how you…and now…now I can't stop looking at _you."_

Ben wasn't sure how he hadn't seen it until that day, seen that somehow Peter'd gone and grown up. Hadn't seen a round face go angle-sharp. Or saw when Peter stopped standing on the sides of his feet and grown tall. Ben absolutely hadn't seen when Peter's beard went from tufty scraggles like his own, to something so luscious Ben wanted to rub against it.

He saw now. Before that Ben's sexual desires had been a mish-mash of wanking to magazine photos of half-naked pretty boys, to wondering what would come next, to half-knowing no one would ever see his big, awkward body and want it.

But that day with Peter, and the time after that, and after _that_ —he found a dozen reasons to take his clothes off those late summer weeks—Ben tried a dozen times to ask what Peter was looking at but he was just nineteen and every word grew thorns and stuck in his throat.

So Ben touched more often but also sometimes yanked his hand away, scared Peter would feel it shaking—"and what did you think I'd think about _that_ you beautiful fecker, I'd have _loved_ it."

Those words came later, after that butt-wiggling day six miles from downtown Dublin, sitting on Dún Laoghaire's nearly-empty west pier, sort of talking about what ifs and whens. Peter was doing that staring thing and for once Ben wasn't counting, instead Ben was moving closer and wondering if he really could feel Peter's body heat and if—

"Do you have bugs in your bloomers boy?" Peter scowled at Ben—then threw back his head and cackled like the deranged. He stopped quick-smart when he noticed Ben wasn't laughing too and—

"Hey." Peter turned toward Ben. "Hey?"

Heart thrumming so rabbit-fast he felt sick with it wasn't how Ben imagined this going.

Fortunately, as has been stated, Ben is a marvelous spy and that actorly tendency was flowering even then because finally Ben knew how to tell Peter what he'd been trying to tell him for weeks.

Ben turned too, their knees bumping, and he looked and looked and looked at Peter…the way Peter looks at him.

Four.

Five.

Six…

…heartbeats and Peter got it, of course he did. Still and all, he waited, scared. The end of wanting means a whole world of unfamiliar and frightening, but their bodies took it from there. They leaned toward one another until foreheads thunked together soft.

And just like that and for the next little while they tangled their fingers together and untangled with whispers who they were to each other. They were nineteen-years-old, life was as simple as it would ever be. Afterward they were quiet awhile and still. Until Peter kissed Ben's palms and Ben kissed Peter's nose.

Bodies took it from there again, chaste kisses turning into the wet smear of hungry mouths, which later turned into whispered wants, which that night became rutting, orgasms, and two young men more inseparable than they had been before.

It was that day on the pier that laid the groundwork for so many other days of talking through hurts or hopes, through things that needed saying but were sometimes easier with foreheads pressed together, speaking to Peter's delicate fingers weaved with Ben's big.

"Yo, baby, are they, uh, supposed to look like that?"

Like eighteen years after the first time.

Foreheads thunked together, Ben's fingers weaved through Peter's as they blinked solemnly down at the weird little things cupped in Peter's palms.

"Cause those are weird little things Peter."

Peter took a deep breath. "The size, the colour, or the deformity?"

"Fuckin' all of it baby."

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

They cackled like the deranged as Peter dropped the baby carrots onto the balcony, then brushed dirt off his hands. "Yes, they're supposed to be those colours, yes, they're supposed to be that small, but they are not supposed to look like Yoda, no."

To be fair, growing therapy carrots had not been Peter's idea.

His therapist Inaya suggested it. Her full name is Inaya McGregor and Peter has no idea what the universe is trying to pull with that, but since Inaya often says brilliant things, Peter'll give the universe a pass on _this_ thing. This thing where he and Ben both have therapists with whom they share a name.

Anyway, the growing carrots thing. The growing _therapy_ carrots thing. It was one of Inaya's brilliant ideas. A _get on the horse that threw you_ sort of idea.

Peter had loved the suggestion. Vegetable rehabilitation. Take back your power. Blah blah. So he'd enthusiastically planted carrots in pretty pots of purple and yellow and orange, just like the carrots in the most famous image of him when he was little.

Though he nearly stopped growing the carrots almost as soon as he sowed them, because they live in a flat on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road now. One of the busiest crossroads in London, full of activity almost no matter what the time, both transplants love it.

What was less than loveable was that whenever they watered the pretty pots on their balcony, it inevitably ran off to the sidewalk five stories below. People are unhappy when you water them along with your therapy garden.

They figured out how to avoid the mini-floods but in the end still ended up with alien vegetables. Because Peter McGregor's a shit gardener.

The carrots were not Peter's first tragedy of _Try._

That's what Inaya calls life: The journey of _Try,_ a concept to which Peter took with a focus long dormant.

Before therapy carrots there'd been acting, a no-brainer what with a childhood spent performing happiness for a camera. So Peter gave am-dram a go and was okay at it but was not okay with how powerlessness he felt. Adult Peter is shit at taking direction, too.

So he turned to other things. He joined Phay at the weight bench, took up running, turned his hand to London tour guide, got into cooking, motor biking, local politics, rooftop bee keeping, baking, brewing.

Gone is the man who called himself Mister, though Peter's still working through that final fit of rebellion. Ben thinks maybe it was a literal stripping himself bare of who he was so he could build himself back up from scratch.

Peter's not so sure about that, but he's learned in these last three years that failure is not in transforming again and again and again, it's in failing to even try. So Peter McGregor-Organa tries things and some of those things stick—he's good at vegetarian cooking and writing—most things don't, and that's called being alive and Peter's pretty good at that now.

Plus he's rich, so there's that.

*

Plait damply undone and lying sticky against Peter's collarbone, Ben breathed deep. "S'my favourite part."

"My money?"

Ben pashawed. "Pshaw. No numpty, the bit where you have _choice_ because of the money. It's not a luxury everyone has. You can be happy you now, instead of sad you."

Peter grunt-lugged Ben on top of him then pushed him off, trading sides of the bed. He then fished his other plait out from behind his back and dropped it on Ben's face. Ben proceeded to do moist mouth things to it. As Sunday morning rituals went it was strange, but it was theirs.

"Baby, I was a bastard to everyone."

Ben spit out hair elastic. "People in pain are sometimes mean. I stand beside sad."

A lazy Sunday morning tick-tocked over into the first minutes of Sunday afternoon before Ben stopped sucking on Peter's hair and said, "So you jumped around, where's the pistachios bit?"

There's no rhyme or reason to Peter's writing yet, but there doesn't have to be. He is telling this tale to himself, sometimes to Ben and Phay too if they ask, it's therapy and apology both. Sometimes he thinks he wants to show the story to his parents but probably never will. They've always said they did their best and maybe they did. It was a shitty best and there's no way to undo it, there's just…there's just him, Peter, growing up finally and anyway, the not-pistachios. Yeah, those.

*

_Phay never means to do it, and yet do it she does._

To be fair to Phasma, she rarely flings things that bruises, but it's been a close call and the night following Ben and Peter's day on the pier was one of them.

It was three in the morning in Peter's flatshare when Ben quiet-clicked the loo door closed, started fishing his cock out of too-small underpants, and heard a chuff in the loo dark, in that order. He slapped the light on with a yelp.

Even at eighteen Phay McGregor had the rock steady temperament born for boardroom take-overs. Supine and fully dressed in the tub, she did not so much as crack open an eye nor even her mouth much, muttering, "Tread carefully Organa, I may die from this hangover depending on what you do next."

What Ben did next, in this order, was to note the grapes in one upturned McGregor palm, pistachios in the shell in the other, and reach to douse the light. He'd piss in the kitchen sink before he'd let Phay see—

"HOLY FUCK!"

—his naked torso.

_"Are those love bites?"_

Here are the things you need to know about those moments.

1) Refrigerated grapes, though clutched in a warm human hand, are still cold. As they pelted his body Ben squealed like a trod-on toy.

2) He was glad it wasn't the pistachios.

3) Pistachios in the shell striking bath tub ceramic at three a.m. make a fucking hell-ton of noise.

4) She might be hungover, but Phay could move quiet as a cat. Before Ben even got to the door handle, she was there, turning him around.

"Oh Ben." She stared at his chest, "did Peter do this?"

Peter had asked before he did _this_ and though Ben doesn't much care for hickies, no, he placed a protective hand over the messy red heart made of two dozen of them and grinned.

That was all the answer Phay needed. If she'd had something more in her hands she'd have flung it, instead she shouted "Finally!" threw her hands in the air, said "Uh oh," and spun round.

Phasma puked all over the pistachios into the bathtub.

*

Peter sat on the edge of his marital bed and he did not, he emphatically did not add one single other word to the story.

If he said even one more thing several terrible things would happen, an unstoppable cascade, and Peter wouldn't do it he couldn't do it because if he did he'd let loose the hysterics pressing at his chest and then Ben would get uppity, and stop brushing his hair.

The hair brushing was paramount.

Another of their Sunday rituals, Ben brushes his hair in slow, static-crackle strokes until they both go Zen. Afterward he sometimes plaits Peter's long hair—down to his shoulder blades now—or studies the dozens of hair combs he's bought his love over the years, picking a pretty one.

Or sometimes he gives Peter a new comb and today felt like one of _those_ days so Peter would not, he would not, he would—

"It's not funny _Peter."_

—the shaking bed was a traitor and Ben's voice had the wounded whine of the aggrieved, "There were colours Peter. She'd eaten something _blue._ It was—I don't know what it was, but it was electric _blue."_

Cackling loud as a hen now little Peter Rabbit turned and tackled his love to the bed amidst a flurry of kisses and giggles. This went on an appropriately forgiving time until a tragedy of miscalculation.

Peter fell off the bed and on to the floor.

Hooking his chin over the mattress edge Ben whispered, "Oops!" and made apologetic doe eyes. Halo'd by his own glorious hair Peter smiled serenely as a saint and said, "How will it end?"

Ben scratched his weekend scruff. He'd have to shave before his five a.m. call time tomorrow because apparently Archangel Gabriel's henchman had to be clean shaven, but since they were letting him direct an episode next year, and his part has grown this last season, he'll take the swings and roundabouts. "Your story or us?"

"They're the same thing aren't they?"

Ben slithered off the bed, landing graceless on top of a man who he had never known as mister or Peter Rabbit, a man who had to him always been friend, sweetheart, true love. He fly-trapped, then flipped them over until a flame-red curtain fell round their faces.

"Well, one is a memoir," Ben said, "and the other is a fairytale. Though the heroes face tribulations and dragons fairytales _always_ end happily."

Later Ben will give Peter a new hair comb, a beauty of gems and celluloid. If you wanted to, you could definitely see the two dragonflies as a mating pair.

Right now though, Mister Peter McGregor whispered against the mouth of his princess, "Ever, ever after."

—  
_I'm going to ignore the fact that Domhnall Gleeson's hair looks like it's made of silk and Teflon and so there's no possible way a hair comb would stay in it. And yet…I spent hours[picking the prettiest combs](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/178183902014/fic-peter-rabbit-the-end-is-the-beginning) I could find. It was important to me at the end here that nothing's 'fixed.' Peter's still looking for what he wants to do, Ben's got a small recurring TV role, they're both doing what they can and trying. It's all any of us can do. Also, Dún Laoghaire is pronounced Dun Leary. Also also, __so sorry the final chapter took so long; it's been a hard six months, the hardness coming to an end in a few days. Celebrate with me by linking to the prettiest hair comb you'd like to see in Peter's hair please?_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Tumblr](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/AtlinMerrick) and would probably shout pretty giddy-loud if you said hello.


End file.
